Best Performance Artist Masquerading as a Columnist

Frank Wooten

Staff Pick

Frank Wooten is the Borat of the Post and Courier. He's having a joke at our expense; we're sure of it. How else to explain recent columns in which Wooten argued that politicians can learn a few lessons from pro wrestlers, that Andrew Jackson's genocide of Native Americans wasn't so bad in historical context, and that the state should reject free Medicaid money because accepting it would only encourage Medicaid fraud? And what about his Thurs. March 6 column, "Heed the classics on CofC presidential choice?" We'll try to sum up the argument in a linear fashion: 1) Yeah, Glenn McConnell dresses up like a Confederate soldier on weekends, but so did Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and he went on to become a college president. 2) McConnell was president of the S.C. Senate for longer than Barack Obama was a U.S. senator, so ... 3) Here are a bunch of quotes from the zany college movies Horse Feathers and Animal House. 4) If McConnell gets the president gig, he should whip the athletic program into shape (like President Wagstaff in Horse Feathers) and put the malcontents on "double secret probation" (like Dean Wormer in Animal House). Wooten's column appears on page A2 of the biggest and best daily paper in the state. We wish we were making this stuff up, but we're not.